Merry Christmas!

We spent a wonderful time this week celebrating Christmas with the Rosses. On Monday morning, Aunt Lauren picked us up from Gabe, Karen, & Miya's house and drove us to their place in Fairfield, CA. There we spent the week cooking, eating, playing party games, playing guitar hero, and hanging out.

On Tuesday, Uncle Chris and Aunt Lauren brought us all to Travis Air Force base, where we got to fly the C17 simulator! It is one of the newest Air Force simulators, and it was amazing to sit in its pilot seat and "fly" the airplane that Aunt Chris and Aunt Lauren fly! Aidan was fascinated by the hundreds of buttons in the cockpit of the real C17 plane that we visited (he was the only one who didn't go in the simulator), and everyone else had a great time getting a taste of what it would be like to be a pilot.

Wednesday was Christmas Eve, and we all spent the evening opening stockings, listening to Mom read "A Child's Christmas in Wales", and singing Christmas carols. We didn't have all of the copies of our Christmas carol book, so we sat around the Christmas tree with our laptops, googling different carols and reading the words from the internet!

Thursday was Christmas, and we all spent the day continuing to cook and eat delicious food (we had been doing that every day beforehand as well), opening presents, and hanging out. We also played a hilarious party game called "Apples for Apples" that Mommy and Daddy have never tried before.

On Friday, we drove into San Francisco to visit Mommy's Aunt Rachel Crawford and her family. We had lunch together, hiked up and down extremely steep San Francisco hills (a good thing given all the food we had been eating), and enjoyed catching up with Aunt Rachel and Tami, and Elwyn, Nell, and Limin. Aunt Frances got her custom ordered hat that Elwyn designed for her, and modeled it for us (so stylish!). And Aunt Rachel's dogs (Pansie and Howie) couldn't get enough of Aidan! It was nice to catch up.

On Saturday, Aidan had his first experience bowling! We all went to the Travis Air Force Base bowling alley, and Aidan played a couple of times too! His first ball was a gutter ball (though it did make it all the way to the end of the alley), but he used a "kid helper" metal guiding structure the second time (he pushed the ball from the top of a metal slide), and actually knocked down seven pins!

We had a wonderful time this week hanging out with the Rosses, and wish that we could extend the holiday for longer. Aidan is going to miss Grandma and Pop-pop (what Grandpa Ross has decided to be called), as well as his Ross aunts and uncles (Frances, Chris, Lauren, and Jon-Michael). We're already looking forward to seeing them again in July!

Cousins

Daddy spent the week at a conference in downtown San Francisco this week, while Mommy and Aidan stayed with Uncle Gabe, Aunt Karen, and cousin Miya Ruane just across the Golden Gate Bridge. Daddy had a good conference, and Aidan had a blast visiting with his cousin!

Even though Miya is a big five-year old girl, she played incredibly nicely with Aidan all week long. She played tag with him (walking directly behind him back and forth across the kitchen as they both peek at each other and giggle), rough-housed with him on the bed (monkeys jumping on the bed that fall and giggle), jumped slinkies up and down the stairs for him (which Aidan laughed uproariously about), held his hand as we walked through shopping centers, played at parks with him, cuddled with him (he snuggled up with her and she cuddled right back), and laughed and laughed together with him. It was so cute to see the cousins together!

On Wednesday, Mommy and Aidan got to go see Miya's kindergarten class put on their holiday concert. It was amazing! Miya sang at least eight songs, and looked ridiculously cute on stage. Aidan was transfixed! He watched almost without moving a muscle for at least three songs before wanting to wiggle away and walk around in the back of the gymnasium. Afterward, Aidan got to decorate a gingerbread man at her class's party, and he was thrilled to eat as many of the mini chocolate kisses off of it as he could before putting more on! Mommy can't believe that Aidan is going to have his own holiday concerts to be in not so long from now!

Daddy was done with his conference on Friday, and Mommy and Aidan were happy to have him (and Uncle Gabe) to hang out with! On Friday, we took advantage of a break in the rain to visit the "Dark Park" (a park full of redwood trees). On Saturday, we all drove into the city to get Ghirardelli chocolate, eat at a food-court that Daddy has been raving about for years, and window-shop. And On Sunday, we all chilled, did some last minute shopping, and Aunt Karen did an "elf yourself" video of all of the cousins and Miya's cat Koda (check it out at: http://elfyourself.jibjab.com/view/OCHt8inUsvF3fX0U67tW). Aidan is going to miss Miya! On Sunday night, he refused to let go of her hands, and jumped into her arms (asking her to pick him up) over five times! He really loves his cousin!!

On Monday, Mommy, Daddy, and Aidan will say goodbye to the Ruanes and drive over to Uncle Chris and Aunt Lauren Ross' house, where we will spend the rest of the week celebrating the holidays with the Ross clan. We've had a great time with our break so far, and are looking forward to continuing it next week! Hope you all have a Merry Christmas!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We had a whirlwind of a week this week as we tried to finish up everything we needed to do before flying to California on Friday. Daddy prepared for his upcoming conference, Mommy turned in a partial theory chapter of her dissertation and submitted it to her advisor, and Aidan played with his best friend Mosissa for the last few times before Mosissa and his family flew to Thailand. Things were hectic!

On Friday, we all got on a plane and flew to San Francisco. Aidan had a great flight (we got a free empty seat in between Mommy and Daddy, so Aidan got to sit and sleep in his own carseat), but we were happy to get off the plane and see Uncle Gabe Ruane on the other side. He drove us to Uncle Gabe, Aunt Karen, and Cousin Miya's house, where we stayed for the weekend. Uncle Matt, Aunt Devon, and Cousins Rae and Elsey all drove up from San Luis Obispo for the weekend. So, all the Ruane cousins had fun hanging out all weekend! Aidan was in awe of all the older cousins, and he had a blast following them around and playing with them! We played at parks during bouts of sunshine during a rainy weekend, played at a pizza playhouse, built a gingerbread house, opened some early Christmas presents, and enjoyed being together.

On Sunday night, Daddy left to downtown San Francisco for his weeklong conference, while Mommy and Aidan stayed Gabe/Karen/Miya's house. Daddy will be back Friday, and we miss him. But Aidan is loving hanging out with his cousin Miya (they have been running around the house giggling, playing tag, knocking down block towers, and generally being rediculously cute), and we are going to have fun until then, too.

Buh-byeeee

When Aidan first started saying "hi", he had an inverted pronunciation which our friend Solomon described as a Scottish brawl ("Ay-hhhhh! Ay-hhhhh!") This week Aidan has been working on changing that around. Now he is saying "Hi-eeeeeeeeeeeeee! Hi-eeeee!" Along the same lines, he is adding "By-eee! By-eee!" and "Buh-by-eee! Buh, buh, buh, buh by-eeeee!" He has also been saying "BOOM!" (for loud noises), and "Oh, WOW!" (because his babysitter Laurie says "wow!" about what he does a lot). He is being very cute!

Aidan's favorite new thing to do this week is to rearrange the spice cabinet. Ever since Grandpa Ruane let him take out all of the contents of a pantry cabinet in the Catskills last weekend, that is all he has wanted to do! This means he is constantly signing "please" and pointing to the spice cabinet, whereupon Mommy or Daddy can either refuse his (very nicely asked) request, or acquiesce. That means we pick him up and stand behind him as he balances on the edge of the sink and takes out each of our (at least 35) spices, passes them individually to us (so that we can put them on the counter), and then has us pass them one-by-one back to him so he can put them back into the cabinet in a slightly different order. Aidan finds this game exhilarating, but Mommy and Daddy are less than thrilled after the 40th iteration or so per day!

This Saturday Aidan had his first time being really sick. We think he got a stomach bug, and the poor baby threw up four times Saturday afternoon! Fortunately he had a decent night on Saturday night, and didn't throw up at all on Sunday, and acted pretty normal. But Mommy and Daddy felt so sorry for him! We hope he gets past all of this as quickly as possible.

After Aidan had a nice long nap on Sunday afternoon, Mommy and Daddy and Aidan took the train downtown for a little adventure. We saw the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center, saw a light show of snowflakes that was synchronized with music on the building beside the tree, looked at holiday window displays (one took up half a block and told a story about the first snowflake to be unique!), ate dinner at Grand Central Station, and saw a kaleidoscope light show projected in the grand hall. We had a great time!